A Bounty of Wild Bees
Researchers are learning more about these energetic pollinators and their role in prairie and grassland conservation.
The prairie leapt in riotous colors as a gentle breeze rustled the wildflowers. Purple leadplant bowed and yellow coreopsis bent as I surveyed for bees. It was July 2014, and I was visiting Roscoe Prairie Scientific and Natural Area in Stearns County. This high-quality site potentially hosted great bee diversity, and the clear, sunny sky was warming bees to flight. Swish! I flicked my net at a bumblebee that zipped between the flowers.
As I transferred the bee into a jar, I wondered if Frederic Washburn had enjoyed similar landscapes. Washburn worked as an entomologist in the early 1900s, and he published Minnesota’s first state species list of bees in 1919. Unfortunately, his records are incomplete, and he included only six of Minnesota’s 87 counties.
In 2014—almost a century later—the DNR’s Minnesota Biological Survey successfully applied for a research grant to update the state species list of bees and survey these pollinators on prairies and grasslands. Less than 2 percent of Minnesota’s native prairie remains. Without bees, these prairie patches might be increasingly dominated by grasses or other wind-pollinated plants. Bees are often the most efficient pollinators, partly because their branched body hairs transport pollen among flowers. Many prairie forbs would struggle to reproduce without the bees that are vital go-betweens. To protect such plants and their pollinators, scientists must first learn which bee species live in Minnesota.
